Ishmael

Rating:
Summary: Who Calls Whom "Ishmael"?
Review: Dan Quinn's "controversially" award-winning book, "Ishmael," a novel in the form of a Socratic dialogue (mainly), has as its subject--in Carter/Reagan "Amerikuh," when the work was begun--the burning question: "How did things come to be (so screwed up) the way they are?"

The answer, as seen through the consciousness of the eponymous character, a sentient, telepathic (also: homeless and desparate) silver-back Lowland gorilla raised among men, is through the culture of farming. In "Ishmael," as in its (fraternal-- or is it sororial?) twin, "My Ishmael," as well as in their North European apostate cognate, "The Story of B," Quinn unpacks the disastrous consequences to humanity considered generally --and all other life forms on the planet as well-- of the late Neolithic and still contemporaneous practice of "locking up the food."

Through his lavishly intelligent and well-read simian protagonist, Quinn paints the picture of "white," "Western" techno-positivist culture as a strange, unwieldy, cruel, wasteful, extravagant contraption which, someone--hopefully expert and trustworthy--has assured us, is a working airplane parked on a mountain top. In this view, we've all crowded onto this contraption and then, before anybody really knew what happened, the "flight to the future" has begun. We're in the air! You are free to move about the ecosystem... but it is too late to return to the safe haven from which the flight departed.

Quinn is among a small but dedicated cadre of writers, thinkers, and activists (Gary Snyder, the poet, is another) who wonder how "flight" is much distinguishable from falling, until you try to land. And they all predict the landing--hard or soft--is imminent. Quinn's take on these issues seems new and refreshing, seen through the strangifying eyes of some (presumptively) lost, animal soul.

Taking the point of the "leavers" (groups of Pleistocene hunter/gatherers that "took" only what they needed to subsist), as opposed to the "takers" (our lot, who exterminate anything we cannot domesticate for profit), he fills in, over three books beginning with Ishmael, a detailed outline of the ways in which the consequences of locking up the food, around 10,000 years ago are worked out in the decline and decease of anything wild.

Unnoticed, or at least unremarked, by other reviewers is the unacknowledged debt that _all_three_ of Quinns' novels owe to an author whose name never appears in any of Quinn's works, of which I am aware, nor in the criticism of Quinn's ouevre. The works are literary the step-children of one of the US's major ecological thinkers: Paul Shepard (d. 1996), lately emeritus professor of biology at the Claremont Graduate School.

Shepard's insights and views, developed through no fewer than 10 books ("Nature and Madness,"in 1982 is the one to which the greatest debt in Ishmael is owed), and countless articles in both scholarly and popular presses, are the very fundament from which the wise ape, Ishmael (not coincidentally, the patronym of the "lost" tribe of Israel, and the name of Melville's most memorable castaway) inveighs against the thoughtless cupidity of the agrarian lifestyle, and decries the "mark of Cain" in the fair skinned farmers of the Trans-Caucasus, whose regimentation of the cycles of nature produced and compelled "taking" as both "history" and "narrative" upon the heirs of Abel.

Quinn is at his best and most original (though his hermeneutics are not innocent of Shepard's thought) in his exegesis on Genesis, a tale that has at its middle a seeming paradox that Quinn's perspicuous ape unravels in a wonderful and provocative fashion.

This first book, "Ishmael," provides an almost macroscopic view of things; a view from the 'systems' perspective; in the subsequent (chronologically, but concurrent, fictionally) "My Ishmael," the reader gains a more microscopic, institutional analysis, and gains new insights into the rationality of the practices of fatal cults, gangs, and youthful unease and turmoil.

I taught this book as the introductory text in graduate and undergraduuate classes in education for six years and learned something new each time. Students have returned after several years to remark how the book(s) changed their lives. It is a shock to see oneself as a "taker" and the object of such righteous opprobrium; especially when you are primed by the voice of your culture to consider yourself the epitome of progressive care and concern for nature. Quinn reminds us that we do not escape the burden of the actions undertaken with our indifference or acquiescence. Its a needed reminder.

Rating:
Summary: A new perspective from a unheard from voice!
Review: This was a wonderful read, very refreshing and thought provoking. Learning the REAL life lessons and history of the world from the Voice of a Gorrilla. I still quote the author on topic of man's Human Chauvinism. We're so arrogant as to think that WE are the purpose of creation, from Ishmael's (the gorilla) point of view, that is our real delemma, we think we own, and use up our earth resources. There may be other species who don't agree. I love the idea of listining to sage advice from another of god's creatures. I recommend this book highly, and advise to share it with your kids. Thanks.

Rating:
Summary: Our headlong rush to catastrophe
Review: Quinn provides an unusual mix of novel, philosophy, religion, history, and science to try to wake our culture up to the fact that we are rushing headlong to the catastrophe of overpopulation. The sequels, "My Ishmael "and "The Story of B" develop the argument from different perspectives.

Rating:
Summary: Good or bad, it's worth reading
Review: Quinn provides many new and fresh ideas to the way we as people are living our lives and where they are going. Even if you didn't like the book, it makes you think. Every page poses a question about our culture that Quinn forces us to ponder. In all, this book is a must read for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: how we can get back thinking about how it all started!
Review: Simply want to say that this has nbeen an enlightning reading. We forgot the way life could be different and why for. Instead of thinking about religions and other faiths I would say that it's important to focus our attention on the magic of the old laws of life and sociality. It has to be read!

Rating:
Summary: This book will change your life!
Review: Very rarely would someone put their personal integrity at stake for endorsing a text unconditionally. After reading this book, I have learned of the subject matter and about reality. This book is a must read for anyone that wants a new perspective on reality.

Rating:
Summary: Socratic dialog with gorilla!
Review: The use of Socratic dialog with Ishmael, is a clever way to engage the reader in Quinn's view about the role and origin of agrarian culture in our environmental crisis. The idea of unspoken myths of "mother culture" presented here (in contrast to the spoken myth as described by Joseph Campbell), is, in my opinion, the book's most valuable contribution.

Once engaged in this view, it is easy to find examples of Leavers and Takers. Recently on PBS was the story of the Viking failure in Greenland. These conservative Protestants considered it sinful to adopt the seal skin cloths of the Inuit, but the European styles were ill suited for the Arctic. It is the Inuit that still inhabit Greenland today (see also, Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo by Ken Harper)

Ishmael's presentation is unique, but the views have been covered elsewhere. Some of the more interesting twists such as the Cain and Abel story were presented in Rene Dubos "A God Within". I would recommend friends of Ishmael also read Dubos, for another perspective.

Rating:
Summary: I recommend this book to everyone
Review: I recommend this book to just about everybody I know. I thoroughly enjoyed the blatanly agressive style of the book - there is no way to misconstrue the message presented through the story. However, approximately two-thirds of the people I talk with who have read this book feel absolutely ATTACKED by the story.

For the most part, these folks simply cannot put aside their anger over Quinn's alternative view of The Bible and its "raison d'etre."

For my money, though, I find new points of view to be quite nourishing; and though it's been two years since I read it, hardly a day goes by when it doesn't come up in conversation in some way or another.

Don't read this book unless you're willing to let Quinn twist your mind around and play hardball with it. Once you've read it, you'll never forget it.

Rating:
Summary: Ishmael is a master
Review: A man answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla, nibbling on a slender branch, who tells him he is the teacher. Oh boy, what a Pandora's Box I opened with the first pages of this surprising, little book. It rivetted both my husband & I. An amazing, enlightening read................

Rating:
Summary: OK, But Not Very Practical
Review: In this book, Quinn makes use of the rather improbable, but somehow appropriate device of having a telepathic gorilla educate a man who has genuine concern for the environment and wishes to see an alternative to the way that we in western society are living. Although this remains a good attempt, I think that he has failed. For one thing, Quinn seems to regard the human race as no more or less important than any other species on this planet. This may be fine in a literary sense, but it is impossible to take very seriously (and if anyone really did, they would fortunately, I hope, wind up in prison!). We do need to learn a way of taking better care of our world without being any more destructive than is necessary, but that is much, much easier said than done. A certain degree of plunder is necessary for medicines, shelter and so on. Certainly, things could be a great deal better than they are now -- that is the one point I think that should be got from the book -- but he offers no real solutions here. At several points in the book, he seems almost to encourage a sort of "back to nature" act, which is simply romantic nonsense. Any such community would buy necessity be dependent on a larger community of plunderers that supports it by providing it with food in times of drought or famine, medicine, and so on. So the one idea that he seems to encourage is really not feasible. Some of the claims that he makes are also simply not true. As for hunter-gatherer societies having it easy -- please! It is a great deal of work and entails considerable risk to live in such a manner; one gets the impression that Quinn really knows little of such conditions but simply has romantic ideas of what it might be like to do so. The analysis of our particular "creayion' story -- that taught in schools today, the story of the universe as we now know it, could prove enlightening if for no other reason than to encourage people to take a critical look at facets of modern-day philosophy that they have unwittingly accepted, but there are no practical solutions here. It is like going to a doctor and being told that you have cancer, but going away without any definite course of action. There are much better books available. This one left me with a very bland opinion of the author's ability to help in our current ecological dilemmas.